“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Instead you are presented, of course, with a picture of man’s body as it reflects, and is affected by, man’s beliefs. Doctors expect vision to [begin to] fail, for example, after the age of 30, and there are countless patient records that “prove” that such disintegration is indeed a biological fact.

In those times great age was a position of honor that brought along with it new responsibility and activity. The senses did not fade in their effectiveness, and it is quite possible biologically for all kinds of regenerations of that nature to occur.

In your society age has almost been considered a dishonorable state. Beliefs about the dishonor of age often cause people to make the decision—sometimes quite consciously—to bring their own lives to an end before the so-called threshold is reached. Whenever, however, the species needs the accumulated experience of its own older members, that situation is almost instantly reversed and people live longer.

Some in your society feel that the young are kept out of life’s mainstream also, denied purposeful work, their adolescence prolonged unnecessarily. As a consequence some young people die for the same reason: They believe that the state of youth is somehow dishonorable. They are cajoled, petted, treated like amusing pets sometimes, diverted with technology’s offerings but not allowed to use their energy. There were many unfortunate misuses of the old system of having a son follow in his father’s footsteps, yet the son at a young age was given meaningful work to do, and felt a part of life’s mainstream. He was needed.

(9:53.) Again, in our material on suffering (see the 895th session, for instance), I mentioned that illness serves purposes—that it has a face-saving quality in your society—so here I am speaking of the body’s own abilities. In that light, the senses do not fade. Age alone never brought about any loss of physical agility, or of mental ability, or of desire. Death must come to every living person, yet the time and the means are basically up to each individual. Meaningful work is important at any age. You cannot content the aged entirely with hobbies any more than you can the young, but meaningful work means work that also has the exuberance of play, and it is that playful quality that contains within itself great propensities of a healing and creative nature.

1. Shades of the great ages given for those patriarchs in the Bible! That was my first thought when Seth told us that in ancient times certain people had “lived for several centuries.” My second thought was to cut his statement out of this record entirely, so that Jane and I wouldn’t have to contend with it at all. Jane wasn’t upset by Seth’s remark, and I could appreciate the humorous aspects of my own initial reactions—yet in all of the years he’s been giving us material, Seth has never before made a reference to what seems like impossible longevities.

I checked several Bibles, a Biblical almanac, and a Biblical dictionary. But one has only to read Chapter 5 of Genesis to learn what great ages are given to Adam and nine of his descendants up to Noah, or the time of the Flood. Did Adam really live for 930 years, or Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, for 912? (Why isn’t Eve’s age given in the Bible?) Enoch, the fifth elder listed after Seth, lived for a mere 365 years, but sired Methuselah, who at 969 years is the oldest individual recorded in the Bible. Methuselah was the father of Lamech (777 years), who was the father of Noah (950 years).

In Genesis 11, the listing of Abraham’s ancestors begins after the Flood with the oldest son of Noah, Shem, living some 600 years. Generally, Abraham’s forebears didn’t live as long as Adam’s descendants had, although after Shem their ages still ranged from 148 years to 460. Abraham himself was “only” 175 years old at his death.

During the little time we’d spent thinking about such matters, Jane and I had considered the Biblical accounts of such great ages to be simply wrong, badly distorted, or perhaps epochal—that is, Abraham’s ancestors may be listed in the correct genealogical sequence, but with many gaps among the individuals named. Also, a given father-son relationship may have actually been one between a father and a great-great-grandson, for example. There are other epochal lists in the Bible.

My questions about those ancient great ages led Seth to volunteer some more information in a couple of private sessions.

First: “In those early days men and women did live to ages that would amaze you today—many living to be several hundred years old. This was indeed due to the fact that their knowledge was desperately needed, and their experience. They were held in veneration, and they cast their knowledge into songs and stories that were memorized throughout the years. Beside this, however, their energy was utilized in a different fashion than yours is: They alternated between the waking and dream states, and while asleep they did not age as quickly. Their bodily processes slowed. Although this was true, their dreaming mental processes did not slow down. There was a much greater communication in the dream state, so that some lessons were taught during dreams, while others were taught in the waking condition. There was a greater and greater body of knowledge to be transmitted as physical existence continued, for they did not transmit private knowledge only, but the entire body of knowledge that belonged to the group as a whole.”